With focus on youth, Gehlot kicks off month-long rural olympics

Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs, Ashok Chandna, said that the aim of the games is also to encourage youth to take up sports rather than crime and drugs.

Spread over a month, over 2.21 lakh teams and around 29.80 lakh players have registered for the event.

Gehlot, who reached his home turf Jodhpur on a three-day visit in the morning said, “People of all castes, religions, class and ideologies in the villages should form teams and through the game, create an environment of love, brotherhood, trust — which is needed the most in the country today, because riots and violence break over small things.”

“If people of two different religions fight, it is immediately termed as a communal riot, this is not in deshhit (interest of the country). Development happens where there is peace. We want brotherhood in the country, state and villages and we want to do vikas (development), and that our economic condition becomes strong, our per capita income increases and no one remains poor in the villages,” the CM said.

Earlier, employing outdoor games to specifically build “communal harmony” was undertaken on a small scale. For example, every police station in Jaipur North circle created 24 cricket teams involving local residents for a tournament called “Hero Cup” from June 21 to July 3 this year, with the declared objective of “building and promoting communal harmony” in the region.

And ahead of Assembly polls due late next year, Gehlot also faces an aggressive BJP and some opposition within the party in the form of Sachin Pilot. The Gehlot government hopes to address this, apart from polarisation, through the exercise.

On the games, Gehlot said, “There is no politics involved in it. I have also appealed to workers of political parties that we have no personal enmity and the fight is only ideological.”

He said that within the Assemblies and in the Parliament, the elected representatives “display anger” towards each another, but then when they play a cricket match with journalists or bureaucrats, the MLAs/MPs of Congress, BJP, CPM, CPI and other parties form a team together. So, the state government is trying to spread the same emotion,” he said.

Next on the agenda is searching for talent. Gehlot said that he was once the Union sports minister for 8-10 months, with Indira Gandhi as the PM and that the ministry used to run ‘talent search’ back then. The CM said that when it comes to global competitions, we have travelled a long way yet we haven’t succeeded.

“Our country now has a population of 135 crore and when we watch the Olympics, we see Korea, Japan, Germany, England, China win; the countries are small but get all the gold and silver medals…and despite being such a big country, we aren’t successful and this pain is felt by the sportsmen, common man, etc.”

By engaging with youth, Gehlot also hopes to push forward the idea that the youth is a major focus of his government. The 71-year-old and his bete noire Sachin Pilot, who turns 45 next week, have often made remarks against each other over experience and age. Gehlot had earlier announced that youth will be the focus of his next budget. More recently, the National Students’ Union of India had failed to win the students’ union president post at any government university in the state.

राजस्थान में खेलों के महाकुंभ के रूप में राष्ट्रीय खेल दिवस पर पहली बार आयोजित राजीव गांधी ग्रामीण ओलंपिक-2022 का राज्यस्तरीय शुभारंभ जोधपुर से हुआ। लूणी पंचायत समिति अन्तर्गत पाल गांव के पशु मेला मैदान में आयोजित भव्य समारोह में इन खेलों का उद्घाटन किया।
1/2 pic.twitter.com/Qg1daM48AD

— Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) August 29, 2022

As per the state government, at 20.9 lakh, over two thirds of the participants are in the age group of 10-20 years. Then, 5.16 lakh persons are between the ages of 20-30 years, 1.27 lakh are between 30-40, 15,119 persons between 50-60, 4,443 persons between 60-70 and 1,567 persons are over 70 years old. They will play a total of six games – Kabaddi, Shooting Ball, Volleyball, Hockey, Kho Kho and tennis ball cricket.

The number of participating males is 20.37 lakh while females are 9.41 lakh. On Monday, games began at the Gram Panchayat level and the winning teams will progress to the Block level, district level and then finally state level games between October 2 and 5. Maximum persons — 11.86 lakh — have registered for Kabaddi, followed by cricket at 7.04 lakh and volleyball at 3.04 lakh.

While the budget for the games is Rs 40 crore, sports minister Chandna said that by the time the games culminate and taking into account expenses of other departments, over Rs 100 crores would have been spent.

On the occasion, Gehlot announced that the games will be held annually while Urban Olympics will also be organised in December–January by engaging Nagar Palika, Nagar Parishad, etc. “When it comes to games, we are going to make history in the country today, and possibly the world,” Gehlot said.